Gothic (1200-1300)

Script for the Gothic text is black letter and that script type dominates the 13th and 14th centuries and continues well into the 1600s with the Geneva and King James translations of the Bible. (Two late examples of Gothic script appear below. One is from the manuscript Bible the Giant Bible of Mainz. The other is from the printed Bible, the Gutenberg Bible). With the return of the Crusaders from the Holy Land, a revival of interest in the end of the age took place as evidenced by the number of manuscripts that were produced focused on the Apocalypse. This concern about the impending dissolution of all things was aided by Joachim of Fiore, who after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1159 (between the Second and Third Crusades) returned to the Kingdom of Sicily where he devoted himself to the study of the prophecies of the Bible.

​During that visit, Baldwin III ruled the the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and kept at bay the Islamic threat posed by the Seljuk Turks and the Fatimids of Egypt. By 1200, Joachim of Fiore had to give an account to Pope Innocent III concerning his controversial understanding of prophecy and his belief that the Age of the Spirt would soon begin and end the Age of the Son in 1260. Joachim was not alone in his reading the end of the age being at hand due to the tumultuous world events, because in England alone, 50 known manuscripts of the Apocalypse were produced between 1250 and 1400.